Implementing a branded
leadership program
While every organisation is different, every
implementation plan should touch on at least the
following steps:
1. Agree on brand differentiators as
fundamental decision tools
• Work with your heads of operations to understand
‘why we do things this way around here’ then
work with your chief marketing officer to
understand why the marketplace rewards your
current brand differentiators.
• If there is any daylight at all between these
perspectives, facilitate discussions about how to
close the gap.
2. Assess the current decision-making process
• What criteria does your organisation use to
define leadership?
• What do you need to do to move your leadership to
a more universal, inclusive definition?
• Which leaders need to put their support behind this
changed definition?
• Work with the leadership team to align the
answers to these questions with the branddriven differentiators.
3. Define leadership simply
• Distil the product of these discussions down to a
few, simple principles. Your goals should be simple
enough to fit on a cocktail napkin; memorable
enough to recite after hearing them once.
• Validate with leaders. Gather their commitment
to participate in a cascade-based process to
explain them.
4. Managing the change process
• Transforming an organisational culture from
one that is fixated on decision-making authority
residing only in the top ranks into a branded
leadership culture involves change that needs
to be managed carefully in an open and
transparent environment.
• Clearly define the reason and communicate the
vision for change throughout the organisation.
• Communications should begin with a clearly
defined vision, objectives and the benefits of a
branded leadership culture.
5. Use internal communication tools
• With increasingly dispersed global workforces
and the pace of change there is a need for internal
communication tools to replace traditional faceto-face meetings to ensure decision making does

not become clogged in the executive suite and
employees are empowered to make decisions that
support the customer promise.
• IBM uses an internal social networking platform
called ‘Beehive’. One of the main uses of the
network is not for social chat on company time, but
for connecting and collaborating with colleagues
across different time zones, which results in
a culture where the collective wisdom of the
workforce drives innovation and decision making
across all levels of the organisation.
6. Align rewards and recognition
• Traditionally companies reward leaders based
on transactional measures such as sales, staffing
costs and whether budgets have been achieved
or exceeded – so this is where leaders focus their
efforts at the expense of employee engagement.
• Recognising and rewarding leaders who measure
high on engaging employees and tracking this
to financial outcomes is a win-win for all – the
company, the leader and the employee.
• Leaders tend to focus their efforts on where they
know they are being measured so they often pass
off employee engagement as merely ‘the soft stuff!’
This is your, and their, opportunity to help the
workforce join the mission of the brand.

About the authors
Brett Minchington
(www.brettminchington.
com) is the chairman/
CEO of Employer Brand
International, a global
authority, strategist and
corporate advisor on
employer branding.
He will be presenting
at the 2011 Australian
Employer Branding
summits in April – for
further details please see
www.collectivelearning
australia.com
Dr David Kippen PhD
is president and CEO
of Evviva Brands
(www.evvivabrands.com)
and a globally-recognised
leader in brand strategy

7. Connected thinking
• Encourage collaboration between business
units responsible for the corporate, consumer
and employer brand strategies. Use ‘connected
thinking’ to enhance understanding of the role and
the importance of aligning the customer promise
with leadership values, behaviours and actions.
• Marketing wants to target consumers, and human
resources really does the same thing in that it
targets potential employees. Communications is
the function that ties it all together. Collaboration
that leverages synergies will result in a brand
leadership culture where the customer promise is
aligned with the employee promise.
Successful implementation requires strong
commitment and visible sponsorship from senior
leaders. But surprisingly, it’s not the uphill push
you might expect. In our experience, people at most
organisations show up wanting to do the right thing.
They want to contribute to their organisation’s
success; the more closely they’re able to align their
behaviours to brand drivers, the more engaged they
become. As engagement and empowerment are so
closely linked, the empowering message at the heart
of decision-based, branded leadership tends to be
warmly embraced at every level. HC
www.hcamag.com